I’ll make it easy. For the sake of argument, let’s simply stipulate that Pharyngula is far, far worse than anything listed in Michael’s post — just a thoroughly wretched hive of villainy. Every thread is evil compounded.

OK?

Now move on. The question isn’t how awful some other site is; it’s not an exercise in comparative wickedness; we’re just going to spit at FtB and flush it away, all to make you happy.

Vacula has to justify THE COMMENTS ABOVE. Not by saying someone else is worse, because that doesn’t change the fact that what’s listed up there is pretty damned vile.

Comment from Phil Giordana

Well, I’m a Slymepit regular, and bar a few comments/commenters there, I think it’s a nice community. They offer help and support more often than not, and talk about very diverse and interesting topics. No moderation (as far as nothing posted could get the forum in trouble with the Law) is a very good way of pushing skepticism.

Michael’s list is a very thorough compilation of jokes, in-jokes, stupid comments and more jokes. These are the comments I usualy skip. Morally justifiable? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But really, just look at #36, and I quote:

Should I give any moral judgment on such a quote? Should I, in fact, take it seriously at all? Then I’d be a dumb dick for doing so. Internet humour, for what it is, is still internet humour. Nothing you can do about it.

And before I get accused of being a vile offender WRT gendered slurs, here is what my (now removed but maybe coming up again) pharyngula wiki page said:

You will please note that all these instances were made in jest (except the “business” comment, but it turned out to be untrue. I think I got more sales from this mess. Thanks all). Moreover, in a language I don’t use on a daily basis. I could do the same with Ophelia Benson or a bunch of other FTB commenters. You know, the ones finishing their comment with “but bitches ain’t shit, right?”.

Re Phil’s comment; “Just joking” is not a magic incantation that instantly make otherwise morally objectionable statements like “Rape to the [named person]” suddenly harmless. There may be contexts in which that sort of thing is OK , but a forum thread dedicated to mocking, shaming and insulting people doesn’t seem to be one of them…

The point that Myers fails to address (or perhaps grasp) is that people at the Pit and other places feel that he and others like him have no standing to complain about nastiness from others when they are themselves regularly nasty to others.

Insisting that your ideological opponents be pure as driven snow when your own modus operandi is to sling mud is hypocritical, and people get upset about hypocrisy. As long as it’s not their oxen getting gored, I’m not aware of anyone from the FTB/Skepchick side of things being particularly concerned about anyone’s feelings.

I’ll make it easy. For the sake of argument, let’s simply stipulate that Pharyngula is far, far worse than anything listed in Michael’s post — just a thoroughly wretched hive of villainy. Every thread is evil compounded.

OK?

Now move on. The question isn’t how awful some other site is; it’s not an exercise in comparative wickedness; we’re just going to spit at FtB and flush it away, all to make you happy.

Vacula has to justify THE COMMENTS ABOVE. Not by saying someone else is worse, because that doesn’t change the fact that what’s listed up there is pretty damned vile.

Interesting comment from PZ Myers there. Suppose I (or Vacula, if you really must) say that the slymepit is just as bad as the pharyngula. In fact they’re now tied for the two worse websites on the internet in terms of the amount of invective and morally unjustifiable behaviour.

Is Myers now going to focus his attention on the site that he has full control over and make a genuine effort to improve it? Or, once he has the admission that the slymepit has some morally questionable behaviour, will he then go on to paint his site in the best possible light?

In effect, Myers proposition is this: Lets suppose (but never admit) that Pharyngula sucks but always, always, focus the conversation and attention on how bad the slymepit is.

“Re Phil’s comment; “Just joking” is not a magic incantation that instantly make otherwise morally objectionable statements like “Rape to the [named person]” suddenly harmless”

There are a few people at Pharyngula who would disagree with your point.

First, a poster says: “*Breaks two liquor bottles and brandishes the jagged necks.*
I WILL cut you [named person], you stupid fucking troll.”

And when abear complains, [named person 2] intervenes:

“It was clearly a joke. It was the kind of joke I’d have chided a person for in a moderated thread, because there’s always a chance a person would either be a) triggered by references to violence or b) too dimwitted (or acting in insufficient good faith) to comprehend that it’s a joke. And then those people a) get hurt or b) create work for the moderator.

But unless you have the kind of Internet connection where people can stick their arms through your monitor and brandish things, which either do not really exist or someone owes me a backlog of tentacle hugs, then I’d suggest you take it as possibly ill-advised hyperbole.”

So apparently not only is “it was a joke” a perfectly valid magical incantation that takes away the power of the vilest threat, it also is able to reveal the dimwittedness of the person who’s unable to comprehend it was a joke.

The comment was retracted, but even after retraction we get this:

“I’ll add my voice to the “no violent rhetoric, please” chorus. I sure as hell understand it, though, especially when the frustration builds as someone like [named person] or [named person] is allowed to cause actual harm and damage and are allowed to do it for as long as they care to keep it up. Especially when it’s quite unlikely that [named person] (or anyone else) is going to be showing up on their doorstep.”

So we also learn that violent rhetoric is understandable and born out of frustration. It’s also easily dismissable because it’s unlikely that someone will be showing up on the target’s doorstep to carry out the threat.

I find PZ Myers’ comment above quoted in the post rather disingenuous. Quick questions: why does does Justin Vacula in person have to “justify” the comments in question? Michael Nugent, would you like to clarify whether you are asking Vacula to justify the comments? Or merely adjudge on them?

It was Justin, not me, who introduced the idea of evaluating the moral justification of what Justin, not me, described as the nasty pushback against some feminists on the Internet. He originally said “It’s not to say the nasty pushback is morally justified.”

I found it encouraging that he was saying this, and I wanted to clarify if he could go a step further and say that at least some of the nasty pushback was morally unjustified, and could he give some examples.

Justin replied that some of the nasty pushback was indeed morally unjustified, and said it was difficult to draw a line in terms of examples. I gave him some examples, and he said it was too daunting to reply to them all, which I agree is a fair point.

So I have now said that I am not asking him to respond to my examples, but to give me some examples of his own, in order to illustrate an assertion that he himself made, so that I can understand what he means by that assertion.

At this point you’ve accepted the idea of evaluating morally justifiable behaviour. It would be interesting to see you attempt to actually evaluate a post yourself.

Try it with the “poison cunt” comment bearing in mind my explanation of it in post 232 of your “examples of nasty pushback” thread. It was a very nasty comment but is that enough to make it morally unjustifiable?

I could do the same with Ophelia Benson or a bunch of other FTB commenters. You know, the ones finishing their comment with “but bitches ain’t shit, right?”.

That’s not a joke. It’s a paraphrase of the politics behind a whole bunch of arguments that boil down to the idea that, if women are going to be welcomed as full contributors to atheism, things will have to change in some ways that men don’t like, and we can’t have that. It’s what somebody says when they’ve just made a reasonable argument that they know they’re going to see ignored because the way it’s been for men should be the way it always is for everybody. No joke. Just prophecy.

I’d certainly say that a speaker at Skepticon 3 who makes lewd cracks about going back to his hotel room for sex to a woman he drew out of the audience…well, let’s just say he can be safely classified under the ‘Feminism – you’re not doing it quite right’ index.

The point about the sexist behavior of that male speaker at Skepticon 3 is very relevant here since Michael has recently chosen to invite the perpetrator to a conference dealing with the issues faced by women in secularism.
I don’t know if he has apologised for his behavior on that occasion.
Does anyone know?
Micheal, after you have gotten around to answering the question I put to you in the previous thread, perhaps I could help with drafting the anti-harrassment policy for the ‘Empowering Women through Secularism’ conference this year?

Sally – Supposing you are right, the Slymepit (or members of the Slymepit) have never, ever, finished a sentence or concluded Ophelia’s insipid suggestion that “bitches ain’t shit.” Nor do I know of anyone respectable within the secular/atheist community that she’s been in feuds with, notably Ed Clint and Michael Shermer, to conclude that either.

So why is Ophelia so content to strawman her opponents to her in such a fashion? *Nobody* has done so. If you do a search on Google for “slymepit” and “bitches ain’t shit”, the result’s two pages. If you do a search for “bitches ain’t shit” on the Slymepit itself, it’s a whole page discussing the propensity of Ophelia and FtB commenters to repeat this trope in conjunction with the ‘Pit. So lying, essentially.

And don’t give me that shit about how it’s a “paraphrase.” If we’re so damned insistent about women not being part of the secular community, then why are so many women accepted into the secular community, including your precious Ophelia Benson? If we’re so damned stubborn to make the community a “boy’s club”, a “He-Man Woman Hater’s Club” and what have you, then why do so many women speak out against that kind of rhetoric? If the Slymepit is a misogynist cesspool, why do so many women participate in it? A wide variety of members, of different gender, race and creed, and yet we supposedly institutionalize a patriarchal white supremacist version of atheism.

Here’s a friendly suggestion: how about instead of treating women (that would be your fellow women, I suspect) like children who can’t take care of themselves and finally start treating them as adults?

It isn’t treating anyone as children, Pitchguest, to pay attention when they tell you what kind of nasty treatment made them leave atheism. It isn’t treating anyone as children to fix that nasty treatment if you want them to be part of atheism again. Do you want all the women who have walked away from atheism to be part of it again or not?

Prophecy: Pitchgest leaves a very long comment that doesn’t say much of anything relevant to the question.

There are a few people at Pharyngula who would disagree with your point.

No doubt, which is why I stay out of the “Thunderdome” threads, when I’m at Pharyngula at all (which isn’t much.)

And as you noted there tends to be some discussion and usually a retraction of that kind of thing even there in the most notorious un-moderated thread on all of FtB. Don’t see that much at the `pit, do we?

Honestly, I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. What does your answer have to do with treating women as adults and not children? What does it have to do with women not participating in atheism anymore? (What does that mean anyway, ‘participating in atheism’? It’s a state of mind, not an ideology.)

@A Hermit
“And as you noted there tends to be some discussion and usually a retraction of that kind of thing even there in the most notorious un-moderated thread on all of FtB. Don’t see that much at the `pit, do we?”

No need to retract anything, all those comments were obviously a joke, and only a dimwitted person would think otherwise. Until they invent a way to transport matter through internet, those threats are empty.
It’s not like someone is going to appear at their doorstep or something.

Chris Clarke and other commenters told me so.

In a more serious venue, no, you don’t get to focus on the retraction and ignore the rest of the post. If you expect me to get into a long conversation about retractions and forget the part about “it’s a joke” you’re mistaken.

Why is it that a comment on FTB that contains a nasty violent threatening statement (not someone saying “I hope you get cut” but an actual “I’m going to cut you”) is dismissed as a trivial joke, but any comment on the pit is considered the epitome of evil?

What you’re doing is applying a set of standards to the pit’s comments (even to the ones that don’t originate from the pit) and a different (and more charitable) one to the comments that originate in FTB.
Glass houses, stones and all that.

Oh, do you like to laugh. Except you said ‘atheism’ where the ‘ism’ part usually makes it an ideological component, except for ‘atheism’ where it’s a state of mind. If you said ‘participate in the community’, then I would have been on the same page. But I still have no idea what you’re on about and what this has to do with not treating women as children. Speak plainly.

Pitchguest, you’re the one saying women are being treated like children. You’re doing it in a thread about the treatment of feminists in atheism. Is there someplace else you’re claiming this treating people like children is happening? If you are, why are you talking about it here, where we’re talking about how people in atheism are being treated?

Do you always get confused when you feel restricted to short, on-topic answers?

Sally – The question was in connection with the trope that Ophelia (and others) want to shut down conversation by saying that disagreements with women, or insults or ridicule or jokes, automatically leads to the conclusion that “bitches ain’t shit,” or that the word “cunt” should lead women to the fetal position, shaking and crying in self-righteous agony.

I happen to think of women more highly than that. We have women on “our side” of the aisle as well, who are not soldiers of the fainting couch brigade and frankly consider your behaviour belittling. I’m sure you’ve heard it before (and used it a couple of times, too), Sally, but please “listen to the women.”

Sally – And if you’re referring to Jen McCreight in your non-sequitur about women not “[participating] in atheism anymore”, then perhaps the pushback she received is contingent on Jen treating women as perpetual victims in a supposed “boy’s club”, where she went on to accuse the secular and atheist community of being just a bunch of privileged, old white men and then proceeded to make a safe space which would denote a “third wave of atheism” which she subsequently flounced from?

Or Natalie Reed, who said she was brought into the atheist community against her will (which is absolute bullshit)? And it was her words about the atheist community that Jen replicated in her own blog post, which later spawned the abomination now known as Atheism Plus.

I don’t know about you, but it would seem these two examples have something in common: talking down to other women. Treating them like children and making the baseless assumption that the atheist community is just a sexist, privileged institution where old white men rule the roost and they got criticism for it. Is this what you meant about the “nasty treatment” that made them leave “atheism” (community)?

However, still, I must ask, what does that have to do with treating women as adults? Are you saying we did not treat them as adults? Are you saying they’re children? I have no idea what you’re saying. Speak. plainly.

Is Myers now going to focus his attention on the site that he has full control over and make a genuine effort to improve it?

He already has. Beginning quite a while ago. The porcupine meme, for example, has been retired for some time. Still plenty of room for improvement A lot of self-scrutiny goes on there.

The tu quoque is feeble. Our problem with the ‘pit isn’t that they’re crude or uncivil. It’s that they’re sexist. And that the abuse there is ongoing and directed at certain individuals time and time again.

And however mean and nasty Pharyngula commenters can be, they don’t use gendered, racial, or sexual orientation epithets. They can be mad, bad, and dangerous to know, but they tailor their meanness to individuals, and take care not to use words that castigate people for belonging to marginalized groups.

“That’s not a joke. It’s a paraphrase of the politics behind a whole bunch of arguments that boil down to the idea that, if women are going to be welcomed as full contributors to atheism, things will have to change in some ways that men don’t like”

Curious. Why wouldn’t we like these changes? What are you saying about these changes? Or, indeed, what are you saying about men?

Fair enough Stacy, I did not know that the word nigger was being used regularly on the Slymepit. that is disgraceful.

But cunt and bitch are not gender slurs – maybe originally but certainly not now. Have you ever seen an 18’s movie set in say London or Dublin? Those words or never aimed particularly at women or mean anything worse than asshole. And they are used a lot.

Why is it that a comment on FTB that contains a nasty violent threatening statement (not someone saying “I hope you get cut” but an actual “I’m going to cut you”) is dismissed as a trivial joke, but any comment on the pit is considered the epitome of evil?

I’m not dismissing anything; I thought that comment was disgusting and I have not and would never excuse it as “just a joke.” Just as disgusting as the threat to throw acid in someone’s face that came from a pitter, and was excused by some (not all, just some) there as “just a joke.”

I make no excuses for bad behaviour in either place; but I don’t buy the “both sides are just as bad” argument. I haven’t seen anything like the commitment to harassment and verbal abuse that exists at the slymepit anywhere else in the skeptical/atheist movement. There are whole threads in that forum there dedicated specifically to mocking and demonizing certain individuals. In fact there seems to be little else going on there besides whining about FTB and Skepchicks. No activism, no advocacy, no ideas being generated or discussed that don’t revolve around putting down the other “side.”

“Fair enough Stacy, I did not know that the word nigger was being used regularly on the Slymepit. that is disgraceful.”

Be *very* skeptical of claims made against ideological/political opponents. Always always *always* demand (demand) evidence before you believe it. Likely as not: False claim. Actually, in this case, more likely than not a false claim. Much much more likely a false claim.

This arguing is pointless. The facts can’t be concealed. The Slimers are vile and they rejoice in their own hatefulness, and egg one another on in their gross misogyny. There isn’t any point in arguing with them. Just continue to revile them, to keep the very admission of any association with them a badge of shame.

This arguing is pointless. The facts can’t be concealed. The Slimers are vile and they rejoice in their own hatefulness, and egg one another on in their gross misogyny. There isn’t any point in arguing with them. Just continue to revile them, to keep the very admission of any association with them a badge of shame.

I’m a “Slimer”, as you call those who participate in the Slyme Pit, and I reject any badge of shame you may try to affix to my chest as a result of my freely chosen association with that forum and that group of people.

I do see rejoicing there, but it’s rejoicing in the freedom of association & inquiry, and sometimes in the important things that are happening in each others’ lives.

However, don’t let that keep you from reviling us, or believing that rumors and cherry-picked glimpses represent “the facts”. I prefer to associate with people who don’t police thoughts or words, but of course YMMV.

I liked the way Mick confronted one of the most infamous and egregious Slimers with the vileness of the place. It’s nice to see some of them scramble to justify that horrible, bullying behaviour and to perpetuate their fantasy that they represent a legitimate and substantial faction within the broader community–like that hideous Reddit creep troll waving his spray-painted gold trophy he got from the management.

Seriously, it’s nice to see that. It shows that they know how bad they look, and it bothers them when outsiders come along and spot what they’re doing. So, let’s keep up the pressure. Never let the Slimers forget how far beyond the pale their horrible nest is.

<blockquote Seriously, it’s nice to see that. It shows that they know how bad they look, and it bothers them when outsiders come along and spot what they’re doing. So, let’s keep up the pressure. Never let the Slimers forget how far beyond the pale their horrible nest is.

Doesn’t this sound like a Christian saying that atheists are evil murderous brutes who deep in their hearts truly know they are rejecting Jesus, they just haven’t admitted it to themselves yet…Keep up the pressure, never let them forget they can be saved from their life of iniquity by accepting him as their savior.

one thing I’m really curious about is what you think of the emma girl’s statement, which PZ and other in the FtB community defended saying it was clearly a joke – that statement about murder to all men. That should be just as horrible to you, right?

My take on it is that I don’t mind her statement, since it was a joke, and neither do I mind the rape example you put.

But to condemn one you have to condemn the other, unless it’s okay when its put towards men of course. (It /should/ be just as unacceptable as calling for murder to all women, jokingly)

And if you truly do claim to condemn it equally, did you comment on it accordingly when it happened?

I’m just tired of seeing things done by FtBers or those related to FtB be taken lightly and treated accordingly as a joke, or even honestly hate filled statements as “just talk,” while jokes from others make them “amoral scum.” I’d like to see at least one person condemn what the Emma woman said as hard as they condemn jokes about serious matters done by the other side, and /dislike her as much as they dislike the others who did the same thing/.

There are 254 matches of “nigger” on the Slymepit, which may sound bad but isn’t. It begins with a person discussing the word, usually in connection with “cunt” and “twat” and how the words are analogous in impact and purpose, and then someone quoting that person, someone else quoting that person and it adds up.

As you can promptly see, the accusation that it’s used to call someone else a “nigger” is bullshit. It’s a blatant falsehood.

The rest of Stacy’s strawman that we use such brilliant ripostes as “You’re ugly!”, turns up a whole seven matches, five of which discuss an person who had included the phrase in her blog post (an FtBer, in fact, Miriam), one a comment on Watson’s Page ‘o Hate (not by a “slymer”) and the last one a joke about Albert Hitchcock.

Eu: I don’t agree with his decision, but Lsuoma thought it was to protect the legality of the site. When you’re “legal”, I’m sure he’ll let you back on. For what it’s worth, I appreciated your input on the ‘Pit (even if some of it was exasperated and could have been dialed down – a lot dialed down, come to think of it) and I hope you don’t think badly of us because of this.

And Pitchguest, John Greg already criticized me for not doing this: So first Ill clear up that I don’t agree that that was the total reason I was banned, so he doesn’t run over here and go “OH MY GOD YOURE IMPLYING THE REASON YOU WERE PERMABANNED IS SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU MADE THAT PUN” Because apparently responding to someone when the topic is “banned because of X” means that *I* must think I was only banned because of X.

And Lsuoma can’t be that big an idiot to honestly believe that it would’ve protected the legality of the site. The only time that kicking out underagers makes sense is when there’s actually pornography on there – which there isn’t. It was me making an obvious pun and joking around.

That’s just one of his excuses for banning me, as well as the “I think she’s a dangerous man” shit, as well as the “you totally threatened decius” crap.

Let’s say he definitely took my threat seriously: Why would he *ban* me in order to stop me from carrying out my “threat”? Wouldn’t that just provoke me?

So yeah, it’s pretty obvious that he wasn’t banning me in order to protect his precious members either.

I simply annoyed him, and then when I revealed that I was a teenager, which makes “annoying” 100x worse because some people are so ageist and automatically tie me with a caricature of the most annoying teenager after that, he wanted an excuse to permanently ban me.

Uh.. sorry. if you want to reply Pitchguest, or anyone else, before you do, if its about the banning could you just email me or we could facebook or something because I don’t want to have a part in holding a conversation about my banning on here – Im sure that would annoy Mr. Nugent here… (sorry :P)

In effect, Myers proposition is this: Lets suppose (but never admit) that Pharyngula sucks but always, always, focus the conversation and attention on how bad the slymepit is.

I know. Classic Myers. Feign concession, demand confession. This is what happens when one relies for too long on the ban hammer to make one’s arguments for them. He’s become the blog version of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.